How to Add Captions to your videos with iMovie
Special Note: While iMovie does not currently provide a feature dedicated specifically to adding captions, it is still possible to add captions to a movie using a few different styles of titles. With this feature, it is possible to adjust the font size, font color and caption positioning, transitions and timings for a movie, video or slideshow. This article provides detailed instructions on how to use the Title Overlay feature to add captions to any project using iMovie.
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Open iMovie and choose New project.
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Import your video.
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Drag your video to the filmstrip area.
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Click on Titles and choose the style called Lower.
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Type in the text of about 5 seconds of video and adjust the Text duration time accordingly.
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The text block appears over the film strip and can be moved into place to sync and lengthened or shortened of time that it appears on screen.
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Once you’ve adjusted your text just right and centered it in the lower portion of the screen, select the text box, press Command C to copy, and then repeated press Command V to paste the 5 second text all along the filmstrip.
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Now all you need to do is listen to the dialog and enter appropriate text in each segment of the video.
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If a sound (not dialog) is somewhat meaningful to the caption reader, place it in brackets.
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After typing in all the captions you can share the movie as a file (MP4) or send it to the iMovie Theatre, iTunes, Facebook, YouTube, or Vimeo.
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Have fun captioning because… it’s the right thing to do!
Use the link below to download a Microsoft Word doc with instructions plus with screen shots
Adding Captions to Student Videos on a MAC